MovieChat Forums > Heist (2001) Discussion > Just for those who think Joe was double ...

Just for those who think Joe was double crossed by his wife


Right at the end of the movie Hackman makes a comment to her once Jimmy is in the car about how the plan is as cute as a Chinese baby and then it seems like he receives a little nod from her. Earlier in the film Pinky and Bob have a conversation in the car with Jimmy, where Jimmy is asking all these questions and they bring up the Chinese reference in this context with the meaning going straight over Jimmy's head. It seems like another conversation designed purposefully to go over Jimmy's head. Like Joe is telling her not to worry because the plan isn't broken yet.

Way I see it this could be for one of two reasons:-
1) She will leave Jimmy and meet up with her husband.

2) They never had a very pasionate relationship the whole way through the movie, they appear more like casual partners than a married couple. It may simply have been a relationship of convenience in which case by planning it this way it left his wife looking in the clear when Jimmy discovers that he doesn't have the gold and thus enables her to continue with her life or her trade without Jimmy causing trouble for her.

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Good point. And BTW, did you notice that Hackman and Pidgeon never kiss ? A hug, a friendly kiss in the cheeks... but no passion. They do not seem a real couple.

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That last line about the chinese baby always got me thinking and i think youve hit the nail on the head. Something more was going on, possibly a further addidtion to the con or maybe something different. Were probably never meant to know for sure.

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She would have just shot him when he pulled the gun on Hackman. She was still with him, and all the 'binos were dead.

She said sorry baby on the docks, and made the deal to keep him alive, which happened then and at the end.

Hmmm.... on second thought she might have left mustache boy alive - so he would suffer knowing in the end she took off to meet Hackman - and they had the gold...

I guess it is unclear -

In the motor van after the heist, she ditches mustache boy with the bolt washers when the van crashes....cold hard ditches him.....

I'd say she wasn't loyal to the mustache skumbagger....more loyal to Hackman

Yeah, tough call....tough call....

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More then likly it was left open for a 2nd movie if this one hit it big.

I thought it would of been a better ending if he would replaced the deck railing & other brass with the real gold after they all had seen that the railings was brass.
Have the brass Railings (starting to be Painted Black)in the back of the truck they took.

Then have Hackman get on the boat and sail off while polishing the gold on the Wheel.

JaY

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The eye contact at the end between Pidgeon and Hackman and the Chinese baby comment was a code. Hackman gives her a steely gaze and she nods back.

So yeah, she was gonna ditch Jimmy as soon as she figured Hackman was out of the country.

you do not think for one second she was staying with the idiot do you?

Think think think. You want things to be literal and make sense.
you forget you have to look for the subtleties.

Young people just don't get it. There are always these little tells in a Mamet film.

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She tells Silk which truck has the gold. Pure setup.

Short Cut, Draw Blood

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When I was at University way back in the Dark Ages, I had a professor who, in a course studying Shakespeare's plays, asked "What happens to Horatio after the curtain goes down in 'Hamlet'?"

The answer? Nothing. The play's done and the characters cease to be. You can overthink "who really gets the girl" all you want, but it's an exercise in futility.

Finita la commedia.

D.
"Everything you do is evil for somebody." - Joseph Cambbell

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In the Special Edition DVD, (the so-called "assistant director's cut"...go figure) there is an extended scene where the characters played by Hackman and Pigeon ARE in fact, conning Jimmy Silk. It turns out that all of the gold bars in Joe's (Hackman) beat-up Ford pickup are really gilded bars of lead pipe. Fran (Rebecca Pigeon) drives off with Jimmy Silk and to make sure the con really works, she spends the rest of her life with him. They finally are able to hot-walk Jimmy Silk at the Wal-Mart in Fresno, California, when they are both in their 90's.

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The way I saw Fran is that she was playing her own little game. Like she was only going to be loyal to whoever had the gold. This way she would be rich anyway it went down. After all, Joe said she could talk her way out of a sunburn!

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They never killed anyone who didn't shoot first - he went out of his way not to kill people, which is why he got into this situation in the first place. By the end of the movie you know he's too smart to get his face on video camera, or to plan a heist where he could get his face on camera without knowing where the video tapes surveillance system was. They planned it down to knowing where the bank vault combination was kept.

So there was no way they were going to kill the mustache guy. He was just a dumb kid getting conned.

She was way too smart to think he didn't have a backup plan. She also knew his style wasn't a bright, shiny new pickup truck, but the old beater. The bright shiny pickup truck is just what the kid would be expecting, which is why it was there.

So the only logical possibility is that they were still conning the kid. But who knows why, maybe he knew about their meetup location already from the guy that got killed & they had to put on a show for him, not that I think they wouldn't have a backup location.

I don't know why, but they were still conning the kid, or she was never supposed to go "south" with him to begin with & he was giving her a clean way out w/o obviously betraying the kid.

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Yes, this is key. They were thieves, not murderers. They wanted everyone in the jewelry store to have passed out, but that one woman didn't drink the coffee. Same for the police car -- they talk or trick their way out of a situation, but the moustache guy immediately pulled out his gun. They resorted to killing only on the docks when fired at.

If they had killed the moustache guy, it wouldn't matter if he knew the rails on the boat weren't gold or if he knew the meetup location because he would be dead. I still think this was part of the con and that Fran did not stay with him, but I think it came down to them being thieves and not wanting to be murderers.

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I don't "Chinese" is a code, like how "pristine" indicates danger. I recall her saying she came her in a Chinese box at some point without any of the crew present. Like when she met with Danny DeVito, right before Sam Rockwell has his beastly way with her.










SEE YOU NEXT TUESDAY!

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I've always liked this movie because it is one of the rare movies I've seen where I still haven't figured everything out, and possibly never will. It's actually a challenge each time I watch it to try and get a better take on it.

I originally thought that Joe's wife had become seduced by the younger man, albeit a pretty sorry looking guy, and combined with the money, decided to make a better life for herself.

But one thing really stood out even stronger this last replay, which was the extreme response Fran had after Jimmy wrecked the truck. No question about loyalties at that point.

Another major thing that someone else mentioned which I hadn't picked up on before, but which is very convincing now, is the brand new truck that came out of nowhere, which Fran didn't seem to blink an eye at. Combined with the continued Chinese 'secret code', I am now convinced that she never actually changed sides.

And besides, why go through all of the drama at the dock if she was dumping him for the bucks?

And I still haven't figured out the exact nature of the freight swap at the airport. What I'm gathering at this point is that they placed an order for those washers and had the shipper put them in bank/gold containers.

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lol thats an easy movie to decipher !!

firstly, when she said jimmy came back to see if she was ok, when they were trying to sell the boat, Joe asked her to go seduce Jimmy.

secondly i kinda missed the swap at the airport

thirdly, Mickey was scrapping at the boat, for what??

what ever gold Jimmy had in the truck, it wasnt the stolen gold LOL

Joe had to get away with the gold obviously coz his face was on tape.

Fran was gonna leave jimmy at the altar anyways, otherwise she wouldnt have worried about saving Joe's life

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And I still haven't figured out the exact nature of the freight swap at the airport. What I'm gathering at this point is that they placed an order for those washers and had the shipper put them in bank/gold containers.


More likely they shipped them themselves. When they were casing the job they would have found out what the containers were that the gold was being shipped in, bought copies of them, and filled them with washers, then sent them to the plane beforehand. It would be easier than trying to get a shipping company to match the containers exactly, and it's safer to do it yourself than to leave a paper trail by hiring someone to do it for you.

The flaw I saw was that they swapped stickers. That's a big risk because the stickers could easily scratch or peel off while the cops are investigating. Since they placed the second cases there, the safer solution would have been to open their own cases, send the fakes down the ladder, and refill the cases with the gold from the real containers, then relocked their own crates.

"The great act of faith is when a man decides he is not God."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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The end

1) The gold in new pickup driven by Jimmy and Fran is not gold.
2) The gold in the old pickup driven by Joe is not gold (how could he drive with that through the mexican border or risk it getting nicked so easily (and why is one bar painted black))
3) Fran goes off with Jimmy but intends to go with the person who has the gold
4) Joe thinks Fran will be returning to the person who has the gold
5) The gold was never switched with the steel washers as they were in fact galvanised gold (a tour de force triple bluff)
6) Joe's smug smile at the end represented the writer/director's belief that he has successfully conned the producers, the actors and the audience (you don't get your money back after you've watched a bad film) that the script was pure gold...

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ha ha ha ... good one!

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How many twists do you think they can cram into a movie?

- Mickey crosses Joe, and refuses to pay him in order to entice him into pulling the Swiss job.

- The job got burnt, so they scrapped the plan. Turns out they were just scamming Jimmy and Mickey.

- Jimmy bops Joe, and takes off with the girl, double-crossing the crew as he never intends to make the meet.

- Joe crosses Jimmy and Mickey, replacing the gold bars with steel washers.

- Pink crosses Joe, selling them out in order to save his niece. But wait! He crosses Mickey by tipping Joe off that he's about to be jumped.

- Fran crosses Joe, bringing Jimmy and Mickey to the meet, telling them where to find the gold. (Why did they need to kill Pink if she was onside? Nah, there are no holes here). But Joe crosses her, not putting the gold in the boat. Or she crosses Mickey, as she knew that the gold wouldn't be there? Stop asking questions, and pay attention to the clever dialogue.

- Now Joe gets the drop on Mickey, by hiding Bobby where? On the boat? On the dock? At this point, I just want to get through this thing. A "pristine" shootout occurs, with little-to-no response from the surrounding population. Oh yeah ... and then Bobby somehow comes back from getting shot, crawling unnoticed to Joe's side as badguy #5 is about to shoot him.

- Finally, we find out that Fran has crossed Jimmy. She comes back to run away with Joe. But wait! It's actually Joe that she's crossing! Her and Jimmy have conspired to steal Joe's gold, while he stands by with his hands in his pocket. Should we check to make sure those black bars are really gold? What for? Don't be an idiot, and let's drive.

- But wait! Joe has forseen this possibility, and set up a dummy truck with some dummy bars. He gets the last double cross in! For some reason, he only sees fit to paint a couple of bars, but whatever. He is one sly son of a bitch.





Whew. And after all that, you're not satisfied? You think there's one more twist that will take place after the credits have rolled?



I *really* enjoyed this movie.

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I think Jimmy should have shot Joe for killing his uncle. Then looked at where the bed of the pick-up's were riding. The new truck with the black tubes is not riding on it's axle like it would be if it was loaded with that much gold. But wait, the other truck is riding on it's axle, meaning something pretty heavy is in the bed.
Fran did choose Jimmy over Joe. Joe conned her, not the other way round.
And if indeed Joe and Fran were sitting up Jimmy for one final con, what's the point? They should have killed him and disposed of his body. Joe had no problem with killing when it was needed. It's simpler and no loose ends. But I think Joe wanted to give one last F-you to Fran and Jimmy.


"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."
-Dennis

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